Activision Blizzard Shareholder SOC Letter, Diablo II: Resurrected Early Access

[Alnilam81]

so if 2 equally skilled persons apply
first is a woman
second is a man

who should be hired?

Whoever has the better personality and is likely to gel better with the team they will be on. Otherwise do further interviews with the final two, digging deeper until the better choice becomes obvious. Really not hard.

[Xilurm]

I have never seen a woman fighting in a plate bikini in my history books before. Why is a more realistic depiction of a female character a bad thing? Male characters are also not shown running around in underwear, which makes no sense, once again. If you want to see skin, you should google something else.

If you think the Night Elves on the right of this screenshot are bad...



...then please go touch some grass.

I'm not gonna have one of my favourite races's lore get ruined (more than it already is) because some dudes on the western most side of America looked for something to get offended 3 seconds after they woke up.

Edit: Also, you mentioned Bolvar in one of your posts. You are aware that Bolvar doesn't have upper body armour right?

[Alnilam81]

How do you get into a culture you're never being hired in then? Women are turned away because of less experience, but they never get experience because they are being turned away in the first place.

You go and get that experience. Try and find work elsewhere and work your way up.

[Clbull]

When even the shareholders are dissatisfied with ABK's response, you know they fucked up big time.

Blizzard lost over 20 million monthly active users or almost half of their player base over the past five years. Six million of these were lost in the last eighteen months during a global pandemic where people had nothing better to do than twiddle their thumbs and play video games whilst in lockdown. These losses gradually came from declines in product quality and from poor business & PR decisions.

We won't truly know the economic impact of this sexual harassment and gender discrimination scandal until the Q3 2021 report comes out, since it surfaced after the Q2 period. But since it's produced a far more outraged response than Blitzchung and even drove several content creators to call it quits, I think the impact will be very substantial indeed.

Unless Kotick changes course and takes customer, employee & shareholder feedback seriously, he's going to be ousted by shareholder revolt within the next year - mark my words.

Blizzard will never return to being the prized cash cow they once were if Activision Blizzard keep on their current course, and I think that even Kotick realises this.

You'd think that even a shrewd businessman like Kotick would realise that if Blizzard fall and government regulations catch up with predatory F2P/mobile game business models, ABK will only have Call of Duty remaining as a flagship franchise.

[Adamas102]

That's not what was said. Hiring someone for "diversity" is putting race above being more qualified. But hey keep using a straw man there.

Haha, talk about a straw man...

It doesn't have to be said because anyone with half a brain would at least know that positions like these get plenty of qualified individuals. You want to harp on the idea of being "MORE qualified" without even understanding what the qualifications are or how different qualifications can or should be weighed. Tell me, which individual from the comparisons below is the most qualified in each instance:

1. Served 10 years on the boards of three small companies vs served 10 years on the board of one large company
2. 15 years managing teams of 5-10 people vs 5 years managing teams of 20-25 people
3. 20 years of experience but no graduate degree vs 8 years of experience with a degree from a prestigious institution

The idea that every position should ALWAYS be filled with the candidate that has the biggest numbers (GPA, number of certifications, years of experience, etc) on their resume is incredibly naive and shortsighted. Couple that with the idea that striving for a more diverse workforce means hiring loads of totally unqualified individuals and you have the low-intelligence arguments that half this thread have been parroting. There are a lot of factors to consider that go beyond simply looking at the numbers on the page, and building a diverse work environment can be part of that.

[Orby]

I have never seen a woman fighting in a plate bikini in my history books before. Why is a more realistic depiction of a female character a bad thing? Male characters are also not shown running around in underwear, which makes no sense, once again. If you want to see skin, you should google something else.

Well the interesting thing about fantasy is they can fight in what the hell they want, no matter how ridiculous

Realistic depictions are fine well and good, but the keyword is fantasy. We aint abiding by the rules of realism when you have dragons, mages and talking cows. Witht hat said I aint against realistic depictions in fantasy, I believe there should be something for everyone.

[Clozer]

If you think the Night Elves on the right of this screenshot are bad...



...then please go touch some grass.

I'm not gonna have one of my favourite races's lore get ruined (more than it already is) because some dudes on the western most side of America looked for something to get offended 3 seconds after they woke up.

Edit: Also, you mentioned Bolvar in one of your posts. You are aware that Bolvar doesn't have upper body armour right?

Yeah, you are right. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch4rc5W4dKY

He is not sexy enough. I'm offended. Why doesn't he fight in underwear? Why did the leftists make him wear all this armor?

I couldn't care less if we fight Sylvanas in a Bikini with High heels as final raid boss. But complaining about female characters no longer running around as superwomen is too far. D3 is actually a decent example of things gone right. Sets are designed around the class, not their gender.

[huth]

When even the shareholders are dissatisfied with ABK's response, you know they fucked up big time.

Blizzard lost over 20 million monthly active users or almost half of their player base over the past five years. Six million of these were lost in the last eighteen months during a global pandemic where people had nothing better to do than twiddle their thumbs and play video games whilst in lockdown. These losses gradually came from declines in product quality and from poor business & PR decisions.

You sure they didn't mostly come from a lack of significant releases during that time? Blizz hasn't released a new game in years.

Besides, you're already mixing up two things here. The shareholders' dissatisfaction with Activision-Blizzard's response to a certain issue and the shrinking of Blizzard Entertainment's userbase(but not financial success, they're doing just fine there), that happened well before that issue regarding ActiBlizz. You're not even talking about the same companies here.

[Noobslayer]

Hahahahahahahahaha. This has so much wrong written into it and for so many reasons. The next nail has been driven in.

[Adamas102]

I have worked in a place where they introduced a "minimum female % workforce and a female leader" rule. It resulted in the most toxic enviroment for woman ever. It didn't matter how well suited the female employees were, since the workforce is not part of filling the vacancies all they know is "You are here because we needed a minimum female %, not because you were the best pick".

Sounds more like the people who were already at the company were responsible for the toxicity if the conclusion they automatically came to was that those women didn't belong. The solution wouldn't be to change the hiring practices, but rather to fire the problematic individuals and hire ones who aren't prejudiced against their coworkers.

[Thelxi]

Not sure what kind of weight this letter carries, but Blizzard really tried it with Wilmer Hale.

[ellieg]

Everyone i know has talked about how we need more people with vaginas, ppl who identify as having a vagina, and brown ppl to make my video games. /s

This is some stupid shit.

[Beastiel]

it was because he hi-jacked their live stream to give his message.

Would you be ok with a guy whos winning speech is about how trump is right and its all fake news and the earth is flat and this and that?

It was a single sentiment about the length of the average English sentence. Post interview. For one dude. I wouldn't care if that sentence was "Make America great again" or if that sentence was "Trans rights are human rights". That person should get to say whatever they want.

I hate to admit it but I can sympathize with the leadership at blizzard and I understand why they responded that way. JAB had only recently become president of blizzard, tolerating speaking out against the Chinese government at a Chinese event would be the absolute most damaging move to the company's profits he could make.

But let's just say what it is that actually happened and stop pretending that saying "black lives matter" in a post win speech in a US event wouldn't be tolerated. It would be. And it should be.

[Bonkbonk100]

I can only imagine the backlash, if a spokesman/shareholder/slacker demanded that X company needed to recruit more men and white people. Holy shit the internet would actually implode.

[mojusk]

Take a look at the Board of Directors for most any Fortune 100 company and you're going to see a plethora of old, white guys. Please inform me what you think the qualifications to be on the board might look like and what you imagine their actual job responsibilities are.

sure if they got were they are just because theyre men its wrong.
but you dont fix sexism towards women with sexism towards men.
its like trying to fix sexual herrasment of women by encouraging sexual harrasment of men.
"cmon girls, we need more dick groping in this company!"

[Laqweeta]

Well, knew that was coming. Good, old "equity," aka complete opposite of meritocracy. Will be saying goodbye to WoW after Shadowlands and not looking back.

Good, the last few expansions have been rubbish - it' about goddamn time.

[Loveliest]

progressive/activist types will not allow you to have a "different opinion" you will be accused of sexism or being toxic and so on

have you noticed how ugly all the female characters in shadowlands are
i guess not 1 dev in the whole company thought there should of been nice looking characters added

Fortnight a kids game has better looking characters then WoW

What. They are supposed to be ugly. Ugly ass vampires. Old world nobility. WoW is actually one of the few games that does not overpopulate their game with half naked anime chicks in provocative costumes. You can literally pick and other mmo for this. Not everyone is in an mmo hoping for female pixel eye candy.

[Greyvax]

Everyone i know has talked about how we need more people with vaginas, ppl who identify as having a vagina, and brown ppl to make my video games. /s

This is some stupid shit.

I agree with this to an extent. People need to be hired based on merit, not based on gender. Trying to shoehorn in a diverse candidate to show how woke you are is just completely against how a company should operate.

From reading stories from victims, it's clear that harassment in blizzard's workplace occurred in both genders.

[Trbn]

Well first large corporations like Blizzard especially if you're in a development level are usually hired in groups meaning more than one, so both will probably get hired. The entry stages of the interview especially at blizzard will most like receive more than 100 applicants. And probably a small percentage of those applicants will get the job, so there's plenty of room to fit them all in, depending if one of every race, gender and sex applied in the first place which would be a rare occurrence.

The only position where I see otherwise would be a managerial role. And then they will probably give it to the women if they want female managers. But by that point they would be openly searching for female applicants anyway, so men wouldn't be applying.

so you can't answer simple question

instead you decided to waste my time to read some of your delusions about how hiring is done

Whoever has the better personality and is likely to gel better with the team they will be on. Otherwise do further interviews with the final two, digging deeper until the better choice becomes obvious. Really not hard.

how many is enough? 5? 10?

[Daedius]

"No bonuses to executives found to engage in such abusive behavior..." what? Not sacked?